


Solemn and Tender

by islasands



Series: Lambski [17]
Category: Adam Lambert (Musician)
Genre: Hidden Fears, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-04
Updated: 2011-12-04
Packaged: 2017-10-26 21:16:45
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,560
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/288005
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/islasands/pseuds/islasands
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Christmas festivities are wearing Adam out. Or maybe it is the sauna. Or the future he is facing...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Solemn and Tender

Sauli adjusted his position so that his nephew could more comfortably sleep on his knee. His sister, passing through the room, passed him a drink. His mother, Adam and another sister were sitting opposite on a couch. He could hear his sister translating for his mother. His father was asleep in his chair. Their guests – relatives and friends – had gone. The day was ending. Sauli closed his eyes.

 _They drove without talking. Adam glanced at Sauli and was struck by his resemblance to his father. In time, like his father, he would lose the delicate drama of his facial bone structure - the smooth planes and hollows caused by his cheekbones, the clear line of his jaw - and become more stolid in expression. Stolid, craggy, with the look of someone who has worked hard all his life. But his eyes. No. They wouldn’t change. But increasingly they would become like skies. Distant._

 _What to do. It had begun so joyously; meeting his family, sharing their domestic intimacy, enjoying their warm embrace of him as Sauli’s partner, appreciating their efforts to slow the gallop of their chatter and laughter down to a manageable trot for the sake of translation. But whether it was the effects of the sauna, or the struggle to keep up with conversations, he felt as though reservations were coming of him that he had not known existed._

 _Reservations. He glanced at Sauli again and when Sauli, instinctive in his timing, returned the look, his heart surged so violently he put his hand over it. Fuck. Those eyes. That expression. My god, if anyone should ever hurt him. If_ I _should ever hurt him._

“Something _is_ wrong.” Sauli closed the door of their bedroom. “Shhh” Adam said, raising a finger of caution to his lips, aware that the house was silent, the walls thin, and Sauli’s parents had only just retired to the room next door. Sauli raised his eyebrows. “You tell me to ‘shhh’ in my own home! No.” He shook his head. “I don’t like your silence. All day the silence grows. Am I stupid? Time to speak.”

Adam stood up and began taking off his clothes. “I am tired. That’s all it is. It just hit me. I need to sleep.” Sauli stared at him. “Fuck you,” he said quietly. “Close your doors then. I will not come knocking.” He undressed, lay down, and in minutes was asleep. His faint snoring confirmed his sleep was genuine. Adam lay next to him, staring at his back. It was the first time Sauli had ever turned his back to him. And it was the first time he had ever told Sauli a lie.

He could not sleep. He wanted to go home. Alone. He wanted to walk in his house, put on some music, and get drunk. He wanted to lie in his bed and cry himself to sleep. He needed time out to ready himself for the onslaught. He knew what lay ahead, knew how to handle it, but only on his own terms. At his own pace. Alone.

He wished he could go to a club and behave badly with some friends. He wished he could back some stranger up against a wall in a hallway, music pumping in his head, and light a fire that he may or may not want to put out.

“I can’t do this,” he thought to himself, and Sauli, as though he had heard his thought, rolled over and flung his arm across Adam’s chest. Adam closed his eyes. Tears rolled down his cheeks, hot tears that scalded his cheeks. Sauli opened his eyes.

“You are awake,” he said. He sat up. He reached out his hand and wiped a tear with his finger. Adam brushed his hand away. “I’m sorry,” he said.

“Get dressed.” Sauli suddenly got out of bed, turned on a lamp, and searched for Adam’s clothes. He threw them on the bed. “Get dressed.”

 _Sauli stopped the car and got out. They were on a rocky outcrop overlooking a lake. Behind them the forest rose up, aloof in their uprightness, quietly drinking in the stillness of the night. Below them the rocky face ran down to an inlet. The opposite shore, its forest indistinguishable, encircled the inlet with its black arm. In the moonlight the lake looked like pale grey silk, as though the moon had only just discarded an undergarment and it lay on the lake surface with its folds shimmering from the fall._

 _“Where are we?” Adam asked, coming to Sauli’s side._

 _Sauli looked at him. “You tell me.” He suddenly swung in front of Adam, roughly took hold of his arms and steered him backwards until he hit the car. He wrenched Adam’s arms away from his chest and pulled his jacket open, pulling it down from his shoulders. “What the fuck are you doing?” Adam tried to push him away but Sauli had grabbed hold of the bottom of his tee shirt and was pushing it up to expose his chest, ramming it up as far as it would go. He stood back, his arm extended as though holding Adam at arm’s length. “White as snow,” he said. “What lies beneath?”_

 _He turned away and walked back to the massive boulders on the side of the road. He climbed down until he was out of Adam’s view._

I’m not built for domestic intimacy, Adam had thought as he got into the car. I want it, I crave it, but at the end of the day I have enough of a problem living with myself let alone someone else. It’s not fair on him. It won’t be fair.

Earlier in the day Sauli’s sister, sensing his detachment, had asked him what it was like having his dreams come true. “It’s a nightmare, actually,” he had said without thinking. “Sometimes,” he had added, with a smile. Her child had arrived at that moment to clamber on her knee. He looked over at Adam with a sombre expression, one hand clutching his groin, the other in his mouth. The story of life right there, Adam had thought, his own face becoming solemn and tender as he returned the child’s stare. If only we stayed like that, he thought, transparent, artless, without guile or cunning.

 _Adam clambered down the rocks. He sat beside Sauli and stared at the lake below. A breeze from nowhere ran its fingers through his hair, stroked his cheek, drew itself across his throat like a cool scarf of air. The rock was cold beneath his palms. He looked up. The clouds were low, charged with moonlight. He waited to see if it the moon would appear but it remained hidden, lighting the edges of the clouds with the brightness of lightning. He looked at Sauli’s profile. His face looked as carved and stony as a rock. But not his lips._

 _He winced at the thought of them. Those lips created the most beautiful smile he had ever seen, a smile that curved slowly like the curve of a shoreline, a curve of comparative beauty; beautiful, more beautiful, most beautiful. He felt his heart collapsing inside him like a house of cards. He put his hand on Sauli’s thigh. “Fuck me,” he said sadly. “Just fuck me. Please.” He bent his head. He felt Sauli’s hand on the back of his neck. Sauli put his arm around him and drew him close._

 _“We are friends. Correct?” he said to the view. Adam nodded against his chest. “As your friend, I want to speak.” Adam drew away and reluctantly looked at him. “Perhaps we will not always love.” Sauli smiled one of his slow, step by step, smiles.”Perhaps our love will melt away," he went on.“Perhaps we are buried in the snow and spring will come and rush us away. I have no prediction. But I am not afraid.”_

 _“I am,” Adam said, looking away._

 _Sauli moved close to him, gently pushing him down. He bent over him, raising his head so that he could slip his arm beneath to protect him from the rock. He kissed his eyes, his nose, his lips. He smiled into the darkness between their faces._

 _“Now, I will fuck you,” he said. “I will drink you up.” And he did. Adam lay on the rock, gazing up at the clouds, clutching Sauli’s head against his abdomen as though for dear life, feeling as though the only strength he had left for facing his fears was in Sauli’s mouth, so that when he burst inside him it was like bursting into tears._

They crept inside the house. Sauli went to the kitchen and returned to their room with a bottle of wine and some glasses. They sat cross-legged, facing each other, kissing between each drink.

“You’re a brave little fucker,” Adam said. He stared reflectively into Sauli's eyes. “And you did come knocking. I love you for doing that.”

Sauli, unsmiling, shook his head. “You left a window open, my love. You always do.” 

Adam raised his eyebrows and was about to say something but instead leant forward for another kiss.

The curtains were open. The moon, which out of curiosity had followed them home from the lake, watched them for a while, bathing them in a light that was gravely tender and full of understanding.


End file.
